Aping His Boss, Scaramucci Tries To Use DOJ Like A Personal Enforcement Arm

[DonViejo]

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JULY 28, 2017 6:00 AM

White House staffers aren’t supposed to just call up the Justice Department or FBI and complain about a personal grievance. Yet that is exactly what newly-minted Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claimed to have done during a combative Thursday morning CNN interview, disclosing that he had contacted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and various “buddies” in the FBI over his concerns about leaks coming from senior White House staff.

“You know why I like bringing up the Department of Justice and the FBI?” Scaramucci said. “Because people who’ve done something wrong, it makes ‘em nervous.”

These comments came hours after Scaramucci offered an expletive-filled rant to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza about how he believed his rival, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, was behind the latest leak, and that he’d “called the FBI and the Department of Justice” about this “felony.”

Setting aside that his concerns were sparked by misplaced anger over reporting on his financial disclosure form, which is a publicly available document, the Scaramucci kerfuffle marked just the latest example of a member of the Trump administration attempting to use the Justice Department as something of a personal enforcement arm. President Donald Trump has been the most public face of this norm-shattering: the FBI director he fired, James Comey, testified that the President asked him to swear his loyalty and end a federal investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Contacts like Scaramucci’s run up again longstanding, binding regulations that strictly limit contact between the White House and Justice Department. Since the Watergate era, each new attorney general and each White House general counsel has laid out an updated version of their contact policy, dictating that only senior members of each body may be in contact with each other about investigations, and even then only in very specific instances.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-scaramucci-treat-justice-department-like-personal-enforcement-arm

[Wounded Bear]

1. That's what Trump is really pissed about...

I said it during the election. Trump thought being Pres would give him a get out of jail free card, and he expected that Sessions would shut down any investigations into himself. Not to give any credit to Sessions for showing integrity or anything, but recusing himself was almost a condition of his passing the A&C hearings. He might still have gotten away with it for a lot longer if he hadn't fired Comey.

Trump is under the gun from a lot of angles, many of which I believe predate his election by years, not the least of which is from the Russians. I kind of resent that our tax dollars have to protect him now, but I'm sure Trump is glad that he has SS protection. People who screw with Putin and the Oligarchs tend to have short life spans.